I have noticed a common problem with all LG dvd writer drives, well at least the ones that are available to me. As of last week the buffer in my LG is doing funny things, both the read buffer and the hardware buffer fluctuate now as i burn dvd's, now mind you that the dvd's turn out ok, but it is definately a problem amongst LG drives. Currently I know of about 4 drives in my vecinity that are doing this. When my drive started doing this it was bad, i wasted 5 dvd's because it wouldnt burn them, it would just get stuck at 30% and go no forther. So i reghosted my primary partition, installed the newest version of nero and switched the IDE cable, now i only get buffer fluctiuations. I ve been using the burner with nero 6.3 ultra since january and had no problems, i use the same type of media as well (RITEKG05), i dont switch back and forth. This problem just sprung up out of nowhere. Any suggestions ? Otherwise im going to exchange it for another one.
The problem is not the drive its your OS, are you using XP. XP defaults back to PIO mode from ultra DMA mode after reading so many errors probably from scratched CD/DVD. To reset it back to ultra DMA mode you have to edit registry settings. Search google and you should find answers on how & why etc. I have done this a couple of times to reset it. There is also a registry setting to change the no. of read errors before it defaults to PIO mode. Hope this is of help.